The government versus freedom problem

[SheetWise]

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I thought these questions were decided by the court system.

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Currently being decided by the tax collectors, who in liberal thought should be accountable to the ballot box.

[Spladle Master]

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You are not a libertarian, sir.

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I never said I was.

[tylerdurden]

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Furthermore, the people I'm talking to in this thread would specifically argue that there is not (or should not be) "legal basis for the government acquiring lands and then reselling or gifting to citizens."

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(Don't worry, I'm going to go back to your other questions in a bit.)

I would *definitely* argue that governments have no legitimate basis to acquire land resell them. I believe I've addressed this in a previous thread. Basically, it comes down to the fact that the nature of government makes it impossible for a state to have a property right: states acquire land either by buying it (with stolen funds), by decree (which does not confer a legitimate property right) (also note escheat would fall into this category), by conquest (effectively robbery), by emminent domain (a subset of conquest), or by "working" the land (which would not confer property rights in the case of government, since they are working the land either with conscripted labor or they are purchasing labor with stolen funds).

HOWEVER, we must be very careful to discriminate between cases where government buys land from a party with stolen funds and where government steals land directly. The distinction has a big impact on who has a damages claim against who.

In the case where one sells land in exchange for stolen funds, if the seller doesn't know the funds are stolen, he has no claim on anything. The person (or people) from whom the funds were stolen have damages claims against the buyer, but the seller has no recourse.

In the case where the seller is aware that the buyer is using stolen funds, the seller is no better than an accomplice, and maybe worse.

In cases where the land is stolen directly from the rightful owners, the rightful owner has a direct damages claim against the thief. Since stolen property cannot be legitimately bequeathed by the criminal, heirs of a victim can pursure damages claims against the heir of the criminal.

Once the criminal sells the land, it becomes more difficult to recover, though the criminal (or his estate) is *certainly* not absolved of damages liability. With each additional transaction, it becomes more and more difficult to pursue recovery. In a way, there is a dillution of the property right if no claim is pursued (effectively abandonment). In cases where the rightful owners are prevented from pursuing claims, they may still have their property right dilluted, but may have additional punitive damages claims against the entity that prevents them from pursuing claims.

I have noticed one potential inconsistency in my thoughts here - by what I've written, a person who unwittingly buys stolen property is more likely to maintain ownership of the property than someone that merely unwittingly inherits stolen property (or is otherwise given that property). I'm not sure if trading for property gives one a "stronger" property right, since that would imply that property rights are not absolute. It may be that bequeathment does not instantly confer property rights, but only normative control; perhaps one acquires the property right in that bequeathed property over time, as the heir's labor is mixed in with it (through maintenance/defense of the property). I don't see that this either would diminish the right of a true property owner to bequeath his property or that it would give others (i.e. the state, or "society) legitimate claims to property upon the death of the owner.

As I've mentioned before, I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about death, but I can assure you I will be thinking about it a lot over the next few days.

[tylerdurden]

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Where do these rights come from? Thomas Jefferson thought we were endowed by our Creator with a few rights, but what of someone who doesn't believe in a creator? Does man have rights in a world without a creator?

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Well, if the rights do come from the Creator, it doesn't matter if you don't believe in the Creator, the rights still come from Him. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Seriously, though...

I begin with an axiom: no man or group of men may aggress against the person or property of anyone else (this is Rothbard's phrasing, but the concept predates him).

We discover this axiom by examining natural rights. Man, through his reason (and his data gathering facilities (i.e. senses)), can discover natural law (and hence, natural rights) by observing and investigating the property of natural objects, entities, what have you.

Everything (living or not) has natural properties, and these properties determine how it acts, and how it interacts with other things (the interaction part is important). Man is no exception.

While the acts and interactions of inanimate objects (and, for that matter, plants and simple animals) are relatively easy to describe, man's nature cannot be so ridgidly defined. An individual man must, by his *own* initiative choose his actions. He must gather data, pick an objective, and take action to achieve it. Man can only act as an individual, though he can co-operate with other individuals. We can therefore say that this individual investigation and purposeful action is man's nature. Impeding this nature is therefore "antihuman" - it is a violation of natural rights.

It is of the utmost importance that I make clear that this does NOT imply that man acts in a vaccuum; on the contrary, it is vital that man interact with other men - he may cooperate to gather information or to achieve goals, and he must weigh his decisions based upon the outcomes, which includes effects on others. The core is that men must *voluntarily* (and mutually) choose cooperation; one cannot force another to cooperate, as this would violate the coerced man's natural rights.

Since one may not be legitimately coerced to do anything which one does not wish to do, we can establish that one has ownership over the self, and thereby over the actions of the self.



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If rights are derived from a social contract,

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They aren't. Social contracts are tools of oppression.

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Why should we respect rights at all? Why shouldn't we use a utilitarian calculus to choose the action with the greatest net good?

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Utilitarianism can (and often does) lead to flagrant, inexcusable, violations of human rights. It can be used to justify all manner of oppression.

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Or why don't we use some hybrid calculus where generally we try to respect rights and liberties, but where we sometimes compromise them if doing so will give a much greater good?

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Someone will have to define the "greater good" and unless everyone *voluntarily* agrees, someone's natural right is invariably going to be violated.

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And another quick question (though one a bit sanguine for my tastes). Recently in New Orleans, we saw people breaking into grocery stores for food. Presume that these people would die if they did not take this food (probably not the case in NO). Furthermore, it was the only food available, and the people taking the food were absolutely penniless. Is taking the food just or unjust? Should they be forced to repay the store? And if so, is that not equivalent to indenture?

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Taking the food *may* be unjust, though given the circumstances, one would hope that the property owners would not seek damages against the "criminals". I would note that had the government not prevented true free market operation, there would have been more aid available (orders of magnitude more) for those that were stuck in the city.

One could argue that the property was effectively abandoned, and one could further argue that government (and from here on, I'm lumping local, state, and federal all into the single term "government") *coerced* its abandonment, since they issued mandatory evacuation orders, but did not provide means for those who followed the order to protect their property. Further, since it both prevented both aid supplies/workers and legitimate business suppliers from re-entering after the storm, and built inadequate levees (which the state gave itself a monopoly on), all adding up to a chaotic situation that degenerated rapidly, the victims of looting do have legitimate damages claims - but against the state, not necessarily the looters.

On a personal note, Ed, I hope your family is OK. I have in-laws in Orleans and Jefferson Parishes who have been displaced (thankfully they are all OK), and I believe they are still underestimating how long their lives will be majorly disrupted.

[Cyrus]

Just an incidental point:

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How can you own something and not own the use of it?

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Think real estate.

[SheetWise]

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Cyrus: How can you own something and not own the use of it? Think real estate.

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Ownership = rights of posession, use, diposition and contract.

I don't get it.

[Ed Miller]

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The arrangement had nothing to do with a Creator -- it had everything to do with ensuring that no man or govenment was the source of rights. You don't have the power to not give what you don't have the power to give.

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So that again begs my question, where did these so-called rights come from in the first place? Do chimpanzees have rights? If not, what is different about humans that creates these rights?

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Is this a chicken and egg argument? The point was to source rights away from men -- who would inevitably limit them and bargain with them. As far as the difference between humans and chimpanzee's, it's simply that it was humans who declared these rights "and that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed". When the animal world sends an ambassador, we can talk.

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It's not a chicken and egg argument at all. I'm not arguing that chimps have rights. I'm asking you to define why YOU have rights. You've done that... you essentially argued that rights are derived from a social contract... that they are therefore NOT natural ("humans declared these rights"). I think that argument is going to run into some problems... traditionally these rights are merely asserted as natural and inalienable (something I have a problem with, but at least it's hard to argue against in the same way religious faith is hard to argue against).

"Humans declared these rights." What humans? Are they dead now? Why do I have to listen to them?

[Ed Miller]

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Who decides what is "enough"? Do others then get a right to take your property in which you have acquired through no force or coersion merely because they feel you "have enough"? You can't have liberty and then at the same time say that anything that is arbitrarily decided by others as enough for you can be seized by force.

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I thought these questions were decided by the court system.

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No. The courts are not intended for redistribution of property to even out wealth levels. Nice try.

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It was a joke. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] I should note that you discuss libertarianism now as I did ten years ago.

[Ed Miller]

I appreciate your comments in this thread. Hopefully the other libertarians around here will read your stuff and understand their viewpoints more completely.

I agree with you that social contracts are essentially tools of oppression, and that vanilla utilitarianism is clearly a poor moral calculus.

Fundamentally, my problem with the libertarian argument is twofold. Asserting ABSOLUTE property rights tends to blow up in edge cases. You spoke of property rights "diluting" (I think that's the word you used) over time as the memories of past unpunished crimes fade away. I think that's a very reasonable way to view what happens. It seems quite wrong to punish someone for the crimes of his great-grandfather. Unfortunately, this dilution seems to me to be irreconcilably at odds with the notion of absolute property rights.

Two, I view the "slavery of poverty" to be just as certain as the slavery of force. That is, say every last piece of property is claimed except a small, fenced-in plot three feet by three. I enter the world penniless, and I quickly claim this plot. I ask to work, but no one wishes to employ me. I ask to visit others' property, but no one allows me. I sit incarcerated, my cell built by the sin of omission.

Lest you characterize this as another edge case, the commoditization of unskilled labor characteristic of a laisse-faire economy has a very similar (if less graphic) effect. As supply of labor rises and wages drop, the distinction between working for cash and working for nothing blurs. Am I that different from a slave if my labor is essentially worthless? Even if the free market will eventually right itself, and my labor will eventually have value, is it just for a society to "enslave" some of its members thusly even for a short-term period?

Finally, I wanted to ask you about children. Say I'm driving with my 4-year-old son. He takes off his seatbelt. Do I have an obligation to put it back on? Do I have an obligation to provide food for him? If so, why?

My parents (the only family I have in NO) will be ok. They both lost their houses, but they have already started their lives again in other cities. Neither of them is under the illusion that it will be "business as usual" in NO any time soon.

[mackthefork]

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Assuming people get no health care or garbage taken away unless they pay for it, there will be areas that are full of disease, it would go unchecked and uncured ...

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In Portland you can't get garbage taken away unless you pay for it -- they have no public collection service, all private -- and your fears have not materialized.

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No public trash here either, its two competing companies. And there are no piles of trash all over nor rampant disease. Nice try at fearmongering, though.

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So there is simply no one in the whole of the US who can't afford to pay for garbage collections?

Mack